The Prodigal Child

A very long time ago I read Irène Némirovsky's Suite Francaise, written as World War 2 unfolded around her in France. It was a mesmerizing wartime novel that was unfinished and left only in notebook form when Némirovsky, of Ukrainian-Jewish origin, was sent to a concentration camp where she died. The real life tragedy that underlies the story made the story all the more poignant. The notebooks containing the novel were kept by her daughter for many years before finally being published in 2004.

Recently I was sent an advance copy of one of Némirovsky's earliest works, written when she was twenty years old. The Prodigal Child is a slim book, just 79 pages long. It tells the story of Ishmael Baruch, a young Jewish boy growing up in abject poverty in a port city in Russia. Ishmael works as an errand boy in the city market but he has a precocious talent for writing and singing songs that tug at the heartstrings of all who hear them. His fellow workers are a rough lot who ply the child with alcohol and sex in exchange for his songs and he is able to make just enough money from his singing to scrape by. One day a wealthy woman hears him and is struck by the naive passion in the boy's voice. She takes him to live with her in her opulent home where she fosters his musical talent. He flourishes under her care and Ishmael thinks of her as a Princess who has rescued him from abject poverty.

Némirovsky's evocative descriptions set an emotional tone for this short novel. The children in the Jewish quarter "begged, argued, swore at passers-by, rolled around half naked in the mud, ate vegetable peelings, stole, threw rocks at dogs, fought, filled the streets with an ungodly clamor that never ceased." The contrast between his sad origins and his new life of luxury is startling: Ishmael now "sat in the shadows next to a pink marble vase, delicate and graceful, with bas-reliefs of dancing nymphs and masks of satyrs decorating its handles… Silk scarves and lace swirled past his eyes like clouds do when the north wind rushes over the plains. A vague but powerful scent of perfume rose from all the gathered women, as if from a bouquet of roses."

 When the boy becomes gravely ill with a fever a doctor attributes his condition to an "overworked brain" for which he prescribes peace and quiet. Ishmael was dispatched to the country home of the Princess for a number of months. At the end of this time the music that once flowed through him spontaneously is no longer there. He questions his own abilities. Without the songs the boy has no value to the Princess and she sends him back to his former life of hardship.

Némirovsky has skilfully distilled the story down to its quintessence. The Prodigal Son reads like a fairy tale but there is no fairy tale ending. The conclusion, when it comes, is quick and brutal.